Santorum Doesn't Believe in Separation of Church and Stat

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Republican presidential primary
hopeful Rick Santorum said he doesn’t believe in the separation
of church and state, noting that a speech on the topic by former
President John F. Kennedy makes him want to “throw up.”

“I don’t believe that the separation of church and state
is absolute,” Santorum said in an interview today on ABC’s
“This Week” program. “The First Amendment means the free
exercise of religion and that means bringing people and their
faith into the public square.”

Santorum, 53, made the comments in an interview from
Michigan, where he is campaigning ahead of the Republican
primary this week. Polls show a close race there against Mitt
Romney who spent his boyhood in the state and where his father,
George Romney, served as governor and an automobile company
chief executive officer.

Santorum said Kennedy’s 1960 speech in Houston about the
separation of church and state, was an “absolutist doctrine”
that he disagrees with.

“To say that people of faith have no role in the public
square? What makes me throw up is someone who is now trying to
tell people that you will do what the government says,”
Santorum said. “That now we’re going to turn around and impose
our values from the government on people of faith.”

Santorum said “there are people I disagree with. Come into
our town hall meetings and let’s have a discussion. Air your
ideas and why you believe what you believe.”

“That’s what America is all about -- bringing in that
diversity,” the former Pennsylvania senator said. “What we saw
in Kennedy’s speech was just the opposite and that’s what’s so
upsetting about it.”